The team, originally known as the Bobcats, joined the NBA in 2004 as the league’s 30th franchise. The team’s owner was Robert L. Johnson, an American media mogul who, with the founding of the Bobcats, became the first African American majority owner of a franchise in one of the four major team sports leagues in the United States. Although the Bobcats featured talented young players such as Rookie of the Year centre-forward Emeka Okafor and forward Gerald Wallace, the team was not an early success: it finished with a losing record and in last or second-to-last place in its division in each of its first five seasons in the NBA.

In 2006 basketball great Michael Jordan, a native of North Carolina, became minority owner and general manager of the team, and in 2008 Charlotte hired Hall of Fame head coach Larry Brown to try to turn around the franchise’s fortunes. In 2010 Jordan took over majority ownership of the Bobcats and relinquished his general manager position. Charlotte finished the 2009–10 season with the first winning record in franchise history, earning the team its first play-off berth. The Bobcats’ success was short-lived, however, and Brown left the team 28 games into its losing 2010–11 campaign. During the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season, the team had an NBA-record-low .106 winning percentage, losing all but 7 of its 66 games. The Bobcats rebuilt and quickly bounced back from this nadir, posting a winning record and qualifying for the play-offs in the 2013–14 season.

In May 2014 the franchise was renamed the Charlotte Hornets, which was the name of the NBA team that was based in the city from 1988 to 2002 before it moved to New Orleans and eventually became known as the Pelicans. (The team’s name is a reference to the “hornet’s nest” of American rebels in Charlotte during the American Revolution.) The Hornets returned to the play-offs in 2015–16 but again failed to advance past the first round of the postseason.